Hello Baby!

Mem Fox is an educator and international literacy expert, and her many acclaimed picture books for young children include Yoo-Hoo, Ladybug!; Hello Baby!; Baby Bedtime; I’m an Immigrant Too; the bestselling modern classics Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes and Time for Bed; and, for adults, Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever. She lives in Adelaide, Australia. Visit her at MemFox.com.

Steven Jenkins (1952–2021) was the illustrator of many celebrated children’s books including Can an Aardvark Bark? and Fourteen Monkeys by Melissa Stewart; Hello, Baby! by Mem Fox; Mama Built a Little Nest and Mama Dug a Little Den by Jennifer Ward; and the 2003 Caldecott Honor recipient, What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?, which he created with his wife, Robin Page. Learn more about his life and work at SteveJenkinsBooks.com.

Like her Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Fox's newest has all the marks of a lap-sit classic. In mellifluous motherese, the narrator poses a series of playful questions to a baby: “Are you a monkey with clever toes?/ Perhaps you're a porcupine, twitching its nose.” After 11 more such guesses (featuring such animal faves as the gecko, the hippo and the warthog), the narrator finally gets it right: “Wait, let me guess—Are you my treasure? The answer is... Yes!” While Fox is cooing as only she can, Jenkins (What Do You Do with a Tail Like This?) works his usual magic with cut paper. In many of his large-scale closeups—the images spill across and off the spreads—his subjects' big, expressive eyes seem locked in a gaze with the reader. Ingeniously stylized shapes (like the coils of gray paper that form an elephant's trunk) combine with sumptuous detailing that brings alive the parade of scales, fur and feathers. Ages 3–5. (May) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.